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For those not familiar with the idea behind the traditional Brazilian steak house, or churrascaria: The meat is grilled on skewers and presented by servers who move through the restaurant offering freshly prepared items to diners, an experience known as rodizio dining. There's a potential for trying a wide variety of fresh and delicious grilled specialties that's very appealing.

The dining room at RaGaB – the restaurant gets its name from the owner's sons, Raphael and Gabriel – is casually elegant, with rich jewel tones and dark woods. During a Saturday night visit we got to listen to live Brazilian jazz played by a young guitarist who sounded like Tom Jobim himself when we closed our eyes.

I wanted badly to love my experience at RaGaB. The place is very comfortable, the staff friendly and accommodating, the rodizio presentation fun to watch. The new menu looks promising, but after three visits it did not come together as well as I had hoped.

The buffet is mostly a really nice salad bar, with plenty of fresh vegetables, fresh mozzarella, prosciutto, a variety of olives and some other nice cheeses. Top marks go to the blue cheese salad dressing, which had lots of big blue cheese chunks.

The hot part of the "gourmet hot and cold buffet," however, consisted of just four items: white rice, black beans, potato wedges and green beans. I think if someone had ordered solely the "gourmet" buffet that evening instead of the full churrascaria experience, they might have been disappointed.

I enjoyed the pão de queijo (Brazilian cheese bread) and fried plantains, which were complimentary. The hot, fresh, gooey cheese bread is made with yuca flour, so it's naturally gluten-free. The plantains are not as sweet as bananas and are more firm, so they cook up nicely and make a good accompaniment for traditional Central and South American fare.

I had the churrascaria during one visit and tried everything RaGaB had to offer, including the Brazilian pork sausages, bacon-wrapped chicken, a parmesan-seasoned pork, chicken drumsticks, some ribeye and the picanha (brined or garlic-seasoned beef sirloin).

The best thing I ate was carved from what appeared to be a whole ribeye. It was apparently brined like the picanha and cooked perfectly to a tender, juicy medium-rare, as requested. It was a great cut of meat, grilled to perfection.

The white-meat chicken was a little dry, but the pork loin cuts were very dry. The two treatments of picanha were flavored nicely, but most of what I had was pretty tough, and some was very dry. I know it's a challenge to get some things safely cooked to doneness while keeping them from drying out, but it seemed as if some items were left on the grill too long.

The menu gets a little off track when it goes "international." The Salmon Wellington, for example, had a nice cream sauce, but the salmon wasn't fresh.

A good portion of the new menu items at RaGaB are Mexican, which seems odd, if only because there have to be several dozen places in town you can get fajitas or a burrito. My chicken burrito was filled with white-meat chicken, seasoned rice, sautéed green bell peppers and red onions, plus what was apparently a previously frozen medley of corn, limas, green beans, peas and carrots. (The overcooked, quarter-inch carrot cubes gave it away).

The burrito wasn't too bad, but the tomatillo verde sauce wasn't fresh, making the avocado side salad (fresh tomato, red onion, avocado and cilantro) the high point of the dish.

It's possible that by an unlucky draw I didn't get to try some of the best new things on the menu.

On the positive side, our service was exceptional, especially when issues arose with the food. They comped our salmon, which we didn't eat much of anyway, and made a quick replacement without any hedging.

With such a nice space and great staff, it can feel like RaGaB is on the cusp of a breakthrough with its food. Some things were really good – intentionally good – and I think consistently high-quality food remains a possibility.

To get there, some hard decisions will have to be made about the menu yet again. If the restaurant concentrates on what it does best and sticks with fresh, high-quality ingredients, there's no reason it can't capture the broader market it was shooting for when the menu was revamped.

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